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W. H. Auden Quotes - Page 16

All Quotes Acting Affection Age Art Character Children Choices Cooking Country Criticism Culture Dance Dancing Death Desire Drama Earth Ego Evil Fate Fear Feelings Food Funeral Funny Giving God Greek Grief Happiness Healing Heart Hell Helping Others History Homosexuality Honor Hope Hunger Imagination Inspirational Joy Judgment Language Life Listening Love Lying Mankind Money Mountain Mourning Music Nature Passion Past Pleasure Poetry Politics Prayer Quality Reality Religion Running Science Silence Sin Sleep Sorrow Soul Study Success Suffering Time Today Torture Waiting Water Winning Work Writing

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

Lying, Noses, Littles

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

Food, Cooking, Murder

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

Children, Animal, Faces

Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams

Dream, Mountain, May

Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.

Needs, Earth, Mankind

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.258, DEBOLS!LLO

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster, the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water, And the expensive ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Fall, Boys, Sky

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.122, DEBOLS!LLO

The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.

Dog, Song, Stars

There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Choices, Police, Citizens

Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.

Writing, Winning, Paper

Now the leaves are falling fast, Nurse's flowers will not last; Nurses to their graves are gone, And the prams go rolling on.

Flower, Fall, Nurse

"Autumn Song". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1936.

The friends who met here and embraced are gone, Each to his own mistake.

Mistake, Gone, Mets

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire; Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

Running, Fire, Squares

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Jobs, Acting, Looks

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

Death, Cities, Voice

"In Memory of Sigmund Freud" l. 109 (1939)

Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.

Lying, Vegas, Bed

'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 2

Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.

Running, Father, Loneliness

W. H. Auden (2013). “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio”, p.7, Princeton University Press

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.

Suffering, Masters

"Musee des Beaux Arts" l. 1 (1940)

A shilling life will give you all the facts.

Giving, Facts

'Look, Stranger!' (1936) no. 13

What living occasion can, Be just to the absent?

Absent, Occasions

An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.

Men, Self, Ego

Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.

Civilization, Greek, Conscious

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.

Self, Enough, Existence

"Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("The Greeks and Us"), (p. 15), 1973.

Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

Years, Uniforms, Talent

1940 'The Novelist'.

When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.

Art, Wish, Looks

"The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Postscript: Christianity & Art"), (p. 461), 1962.

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier.

Art, Apples, Giving

1936 'Letter to Byron', pt.3, stanza 20, collected in Poems, Essays, Dramatic Writings 1927-1939 (1977).

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